Appropedia uses Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) to store structured data in wiki pages and then query that data to produce dynamic elements like lists, maps, tables and more.
Quickstart
Suppose you have a bunch of pages and you want to store the date on which each page was created. So, you edit each page and add the following in-text annotation anywhere on the page:
[[Date::2022-04-20]]
This will set the Property:Date to the value "2022-04-20" for the current page. Once you've done this to several pages, you can add the following inline query anywhere on Appropedia and it will output an unordered list (<ul>) of 5 random pages from 2022:
{{#ask: [[Date::2022]] | format = ul | order = random | limit = 5 }}
You can complicate such queries endlessly with printout statements, result formats, search operators, subqueries and more.
But filling Appropedia with in-text annotations like [[Date::2022-04-20]]
would be confusing and inconvenient, so in-text annotations are always hidden behind templates such as Template:Project data.
So now that you know the basics, hack away!
Property naming
- Properties should be named in the most simple and intuitive way possible
- Properties that accept multiple values should be named in plural (e.g. Property:Keywords)
- Properties that refer to objects other than pages should prefix the relevant type of object when there's a conflict with a page property (e.g. Property:Project authors and Property:Authors)
- Appropedia does not follow the Semantic MediaWiki property naming suggestions of naming properties as verb phrases (e.g. Property:Has author). The reason is that the problem it tries to solve almost never happens in Appropedia and when it does, it can be solved in other ways (e.g. Property:Contributions as the converse of Property:Authors)
See also
- Special:Properties - All existing semantic properties on Appropedia
- Special:Browse - Semantic data of any content page on Appropedia
- Special:Ask - Try some queries
- Category:Semantic templates - All templates that store or query semantic data
- Semantic REST API - Semantic endpoint of the Appropedia REST API
- https://www.semantic-mediawiki.org - Semantic MediaWiki homepage